I won't bother with my reasons since
A) They have been explained many times before
B) Someone will choose to tell me how I can achieve the same results in Windows 8 without a Start Menu, despite the fact that:
C) It is a personal preference.

While I think that it will make the transition better for people i think that overall the progression of the OS is not that bad and once you get used to it you probably wont use the old start menu much. Even in Windows 7 i currently rarely use the start menu I have Launchy installed and I just use it to load most everything that is in the start menu.

Not really, no. The live tiles alone are absurdly handy. Just needs a bit of refinement on the 'back side' of the menu.. drag-and-drop organizing, collapsible/nested sub-menus, etc. The presentation is mostly fine, just missing some of the functionality it used to have.